Kurdistan
Kurdistan, officially the Kurdish Republic (Kurdish: Komara Kurdî) is a country in west Asia. Currently headed by Celadet Bedir Khan, President of the republic. Kurdistan is bordered to the north by Armenia; to the west by French Phoenicia and the Ottoman Empire; to the south by the Mashriqi Kingdom; and to the east by Iran. History Classical Era the tenth and eleventh centuries, several Kurdish principalities emerged in the region: in the north the Shaddadids (951–1174) (in east Transcaucasia between the Kur and Araxes rivers) and the Rawadids (955–1221) (centered on Tabriz and which controlled all of Azerbaijan), in the east the Hasanwayhids (959–1015) (in Zagros between Shahrizor and Khuzistan) and the Annazids (990–1116) (centered in Hulwan) and in the west the Marwanids (990–1096) to the south of Diyarbakır and north of Jazira. Kurdistan in the Middle Ages was a collection of semi-independent and independent states called emirates. It was nominally under indirect political or religious influence of Khalifs or Shahs. A comprehensive history of these states and their relationship with their neighbors is given in the text of Sharafnama, written by Prince Sharaf al-Din Bitlisi in 1597. The emirates included Baban, Soran, Badinan and Garmiyan in the south; Bakran, Bohtan (or Botan) and Badlis in the north, and Mukriyan and Ardalan in the east. The earliest medieval attestation of the toponym Kurdistan is found in a 12th-century Armenian historical text by Matteos Urhayeci. He described a battle near Amid and Siverek in 1062 as to have taken place in Kurdistan. The second record occurs in the prayer from the colophon of an Armenian manuscript of the Gospels, written in 1200. A later use of the term Kurdistan is found in Empire of Trebizond documents in 1336 and in Nuzhat-al-Qulub, written by Hamdollah Mostowfi in 1340. Modern History According to Sharafkhan Bitlisi in his Sharafnama, the boundaries of the Kurdish land begin at the Strait of Hormuz in the Persian Gulf and stretch on an even line to the end of Malatya and Marash. Evliya Çelebi, who traveled in Kurdistan between 1640 and 1655, mentioned different districts of Kurdistan including Erzurum, Van, Hakkari, Cizre, Imaddiya, Mosul, Shahrizor, Harir, Ardalan, Baghdad, Derne, Derteng, until Basra. In the 16th century, after prolonged wars, Kurdish-inhabited areas were split between the Safavid and Ottoman empires. A major division of Kurdistan occurred in the aftermath of the Battle of Chaldiran in 1514, and was formalized in the 1639 Treaty of Zuhab. From then until the aftermath of World War I, Kurdish areas (including most of Mesopotamia, eastern Anatolia, and traditionally Kurdish northeastern Syria) were generally under Ottoman rule, apart from the century-long, intermittent Iranian occupation in the early modern to modern period, and the later reconquest and vast expansion by the Iranian military leader Nader Shah in the first half of the 18th century. During WWI, the Kurds revolted against the Ottoman rule as Koçgiri rebellion happed early which ended up in Kurds being victorious, after the collapse of the Ottoman Empire, the Allies originally contrived to split Kurdistan (as detailed in the ultimately unratified Treaty of Sèvres), but then, eventually Kurdistan is included as released from the Ottoman Empire, autonomous Kurdish kingdoms during and after the revolt were disestablished, meanwhile Iraqi and Syrian Kurdistan has either fallen to Mashriqi Kingdom or French Phoenicia under the Sykes–Picot Agreement. Category:Countries Category:Asian countries